Can you believe we are reaching the final stretch of 2017 and beginning to prep for a fresh start in the New Year? Many businesses are wrapping up their strategies for this year and beginning to evaluate what was successful. This assist in advising their national SEO strategy for 2018. But in the ever changing world of SEO, what factors actually matter going into 2018 for your strategy? Here are the guidelines and most successful factors for changing you results and bringing higher ROI going in 2018.
Website Security
In a study by SEMrush, 65% of high ranking domains in search results (usually in the top 3 results) had HTTPs integrated into the website. This security factor is being heavily enforced by Google to help protect viewers and consumers from harmful hacking or identity theft. This is an absolute must for anyone selling products or services online with the option of credit card transactions.
Content
SEMrush also found that most websites that consistently ranked in the top 3 for search results were often the website that consistently write content. This does not mean that you should be blasting out content that is meaningless. Google’s algorithm can easily see through this and even possibly penalize you. Integrate a strong content marketing plan that creates thoughtful content that your consumers are actually searching for. Do not focus on length, but rather getting the point across to the consumer.
Keywords
SEMrush also found out that 35 percent of domains ranking for high-volume keywords don’t have the keyword in the title. Yep, thats right. Keywords matter, but not necessarily in the anchor text (H2s, H3s) and titles. Google’s algorithm may see this as keyword stuffing and although it will not hurt your results, it will not help either. Only use keywords in places where they fit into content and are appropriate. Google’s algorithm has gotten extremely sophisticated and can read context of wording, basically reading “between the lines”. Scary cool, huh?!
Traffic Signals
Google is now using analytics signals such as bounce rates and pages visited to determine content quality. If a person visits your webpage and doesn’t find what they are looking for, Google sees this as possible irrelevant content and puts this into their algorithm factoring.
Factors That Are Dead
Yes, some factors really don’t matter anymore because nearly all sites are fixing these issues and have become a non-factor:
- Page Load Speed
- Keyword Titles
- Go Big Content for No Reason
These are just some of the updates that your business needs to focus on for SEO success. Contact Atria today to learn more about strategies for 2018!